


Shore Leave

by Elaewin



Category: Firefly
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Gen, Old LJ stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-26
Updated: 2018-04-26
Packaged: 2019-04-28 01:25:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14438505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elaewin/pseuds/Elaewin
Summary: “Wouldn’t mind a real bath.” – Zoë, episode 1.11 “Serenity”In which Zoë gets her wish.





	Shore Leave

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this a long, long time ago. By which I mean 2006--the LiveJournal days of yore. ;P

Hoban Washburn looked at his wife in dismay.

“When you said ‘a real bath’, I thought you meant, you know, a bathtub, and privacy--maybe some bubbles.”

Wash and Zoë stood in front of a plain storefront. A simple sign above the door read “public bath” in six different languages. Zoë, who was staring at the entrance with a strange, hungry look on her face, gave a distracted, “Mm?” in response.

“Zoë, honey, are you listening to me?” Wash tried again. “What about that hotel we passed a couple of streets back? It looked nice. Fancy even. I’m sure that they have bathtubs in each of the _private_ rooms there.”

She turned and looked at him then, and the look in her eyes was one that Wash had only seen a few times. It was a soft, unfocused yet somehow _hungry_ look. It was the look that’d been on her face as she’d led him to her bunk the first time they’d made love. It was the look that she got when she looked at a real grilled steak, when she ate the small chocolates that she kept hidden under the bed, or when he kissed a certain spot on the side of her neck. And now she was directing it at...a doorway? 

Wash knew that look.

He sighed, admitting defeat. “Okay, Zoë. Here it is.”

She smiled and squeezed his hand, then opened the door and pulled him inside.

***

Zoë knew that Wash was confused, that this wasn’t at all what he’d expected. As she paid the bath hostess, he paced around the edges of the room, running his fingers along the cloth-covered walls, and playing with the fringe on one of the padded benches near the front door. 

The hostess rang two small bells and after a moment two attendants appeared. One, a man, bowed at Wash and indicated that he should proceed through a hanging blue silk curtain over which a sign read “Men only.” The woman led Zoë to a similar curtain in the opposite wall under a "Women only" sign. 

As she walked through the curtain on the female-only side of the bath, Zoë caught Wash giving her a last, vaguely pleading look. She smiled, blew him a kiss, and then turned her back on him. If the man was still holding out for a tub of water and some bubbles, well, he was _kwong-juh duh_.

The attendant was a small, coppery-skinned woman in a lightweight cotton robe whose poise reminded Zoë strongly of Inara. As they walked down the hallway into the changing room, Zoë learned that her name was Namhla, and that she’d be Zoë’s masseuse. Namhla handed Zoë a cloth wrap, a pair of geta-like sandals, an oddly dented metal bowl, and two towels, and indicated a small locker where she could store her clothing. Once Zoë was changed, Namhla led her further inside.

In the doorway of the main bathing chamber a wave of warm, damp air flowed over Zoe, and she sighed deeply. This is what she’d been looking forward to. Namhla smiled at her. “I’ll be back in a while, okay?” Zoë nodded, and spent a moment more just breathing in the warm air and the comforting scents of jasmine soap, damp skin, and warm stone.

The bath chamber was a large, round room with a colorfully tiled floor and tall basins of water alternating with marble benches all along the walls. Women seated on the benches smiled and waved at Zoë as she walked in. A few small children ran around the room, or slept on piles of towels near their mothers. In the center of the room was a huge, heated, round marble platform, on which a number of other women were laying. On one edge, a woman lay boneless as another attendant gave her a massage.

Zoë shed her wrap, and folded it neatly onto a nearby shelf along with her towels. She walked to the nearest basin and used her bowl to pour water over herself. When she was thoroughly rinsed, Zoë walked over to the central platform and lay down on the hot stone, her head towards the center of the circle. The bowl, shaped to fit the contour of a person’s neck, became a pillow of sorts.

As soon as her skin touched the blissfully warm marble she broke into a sweat. Zoë could feel all of her muscles began to relax. With her eyes half-closed, she considered that this was really all Inara’s fault. 

On a trip to Persephone just a couple of months after she’d first come on board, Inara’d volunteered to take Zoë and Kaylee to one of the hammams which catered to unengaged Companions. It’d been luxurious. But best of all, as the three women had talked and laughed together, they’d become friends rather than just shipmates. Inara and Kaylee were the first female friends that Zoë’d had since she joined the Army, all those years back. That afternoon was a golden memory, and she treasured it.

A plain old bathtub would never do again.

Zoë’s musings were interrupted by a tap on her feet. Namhla was back. Zoë moved over to the edge of the platform and Namhla began the process of the real bath, rubbing soap all over her body and then scrubbing it off with a harsh mitt. By the time Namhla was done, Zoë’d shed enough dead skin that she felt a kilo or so lighter. 

After a quick but complete rinse, Zoë was directed to lay down face first, and given a massage that made her clench her teeth in pain, but left her peacefully limp. She felt as if she were floating, and would have drifted to sleep if some of the nearby women hadn’t started up a conversation with her, asking where she was from, would she like some water, and where in the _tyen shiao-duh_ had she gotten that scar?

For the next hour, Zoë lounged in the bathing room, chatting happily with Namhla and some of the other women. One rubbed sweetly scented henna into her hair in exchange for a story about life on Serenity; another woman, a young mother, gleefully painted Zoë’s tonails bright red while Zoë held her infant daughter.

Feeling comfortable, refreshed, and cleaner than she’d been in months, Zoë eventually wandered into the next room to cool down, drink more water, and get dressed.

***

Wash felt great. Bathed and relaxed, he met Zoë in the front room as she pushed aside the curtain of blue silk. “How was your bath, sweetie?” She looked different somehow.

Zoë smiled. “It was wonderful. Yours?”

“I have to admit that it was...pretty good.” He returned, and she laughed just as he’d hoped. She’d done something with her hair, he decided, and she smelled all flowery. 

Wash opened the door with a flourish and waved Zoë through. The two of them began walking up the street, dodging a rickshaw carrying two giggling girls and a stern-eyed matron. 

“So, my wife, where to now? Shall we find ourselves some quiet bistro in which to spend more of our ill-gotten gains? Shall we find some of the rest of the crew, for some fine carousing?” Wash made a great show of pondering his last statement. “Or perhaps not. But there could be serenading, or reveling, or even dancing...”

Suddenly, Wash realized that Zoë was no longer beside him. “Sweetie?” he said, turning to look at her where she’d stopped in the middle of the street. A small smile played across her lips as she looked at him.

Wash knew that look.

“Husband, what was that you said earlier about a _private_ hotel room?”

**Author's Note:**

> Translations:  
> These are from the [Firefly–Serenity Chinese Pinyinary](http://fireflychinese.kevinsullivansite.net/index.html), but I'm not promising that they're terribly accurate. The translations of Chinese phrases on the show were notoriously bad.  
>  _kwong-juh duh_ \- "a crazy person"  
>  _tyen shiao-duh_ \- "heaven knows", used here in the sense of "where in the name of heaven..."


End file.
